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RESEARCH:

Getting Protection

San Diego biotech' results show DNA vaccine could work in humans.


Using conventional vaccines to respond to an avian flu pandemic poses a few problems. It can take as long as nine months to grow a vaccine, a delay that could render such efforts worthless to combat a pandemic. The other challenge is such vaccines are grown in chicken eggs, which may be hard to come by in the midst of a bird flu pandemic. The San Diego vaccine maker Vical may have found a solution.

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TJOLS TV The Life Sciences in the News

Genetically Altered Tomatoes Provide Antioxident Boost

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Podcast Guinea Pig Zero Speaks


For much of his adult life, Robert Helms worked as a professional medical test subject. He chronicled his experiences, and that of others, in his zine Guinea Pig Zero. Excerpts of the publication are available in the book Guinea Pig Zero: An Anthology of the Journal for Human Research Subjects. We spoke to Helms about his career choice, the day to day lives of professional guinea pigs, and the role of human test subjects in modern medical science. Listen to the podcast.

TJOLS WEBCAST Epigenetics: Playing the Genetic Score



Epigenetics is challenging long-held notions that our genes are our destiny and radically changing the way researchers think about the development of certain illnesses. As science come to understand the way epigenetic processes silence genes, it is given rise to promising new therapies for diseases such as MDS. Watch The Journal of Life Sciences webcast.

By the numbers Economic Ills

There has been a growing body of evidence, much of it anecdotal, that the nation’s economic downturn has people putting aside their medical needs to make ends meet. New evidence of this came in the form of a front page story in The New York Times this week that reported for the first time in a decade the number of prescription drugs dispensed through August was lower than the same period a year ago, according to data from IMS Health.